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CANBERRA: Australia’s top military officer admitted on Thursday (Nov 19) that there was credible evidence that its special forces illegally killed at least 39 Afghan civilians and prisoners, and recommended that the matter be addressed by a prosecutor investigating alleged crimes of war.
“Some patrols took justice into their own hands, rules were broken, stories were made up, lies were told and prisoners were killed,” said Defense Force chief General Angus Campbell.
His comments came as the result of a years-long convicting investigation into the behavior of the military in Afghanistan.
Campbell apologized “sincerely and unreservedly” to the people of Afghanistan, saying that the 25 Australian special forces accused of wrongdoing in 23 incidents had “tainted” his regiment, the armed forces and Australia.
“This shameful record includes alleged cases in which new members of the patrol were forced to shoot a prisoner to achieve the first murder of that soldier, in a gruesome practice known as ‘bloodletting.’
Campbell said 19 current and former members of Australia’s armed forces will be referred to a special investigator who will soon be appointed to determine if there was sufficient evidence to prosecute.
He also called for the revocation of some distinguished service medals awarded to special operations forces that served in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2013.
READ: Trump will reduce troop levels in Afghanistan, but does not reach full withdrawal
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, more than 26,000 Australian soldiers were sent to Afghanistan to fight alongside US and allied forces against the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other extremist groups.
Australian combat troops left the country in 2013, but a number of often brutal accounts of the conduct of elite special forces units have emerged since then.
They range from reports of troops killing a six-year-old boy in a house raid to a prisoner who was shot and killed to save space in a helicopter.
The army has long been revered in Australia, and its campaigns, from Gallipoli to Kokoda, have played a crucial role in furthering the country’s identity as independent from the British colonial power.
The Australian government tried to cushion the blow of the report, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Australians last week to prepare for the “honest and brutal truths” contained in the redacted document.
Morrison also called his Afghan counterpart on Wednesday to foreshadow “some disturbing allegations” that the government was taking “very seriously.”
President Ashraf Ghani’s office took a different interpretation of the conversation, saying in a series of tweets that Morrison had “expressed his deepest regret for the misconduct”, a characterization that was strongly disputed by Australian officials.
Last week, Morrison announced the appointment of a special investigator to prosecute the alleged war crimes, a move designed to avoid any prosecution at the International Criminal Court.
An independent panel was also created to drive leadership and cultural changes within the military.
The Australian government had spent years trying to suppress whistleblower reports of the alleged wrongdoing, and the police had even investigated the reporters involved in exposing those accounts.
The matter first came to public attention in 2017 when the ABC public broadcaster released so-called “Afghan files”, which allegedly had Australian troops killed unarmed men and boys in Afghanistan.
In response, Australian police launched an investigation into two ABC reporters for obtaining classified information, including raiding the station’s Sydney headquarters last year, before dropping the case.
